Wednesday, December 21, 2005

This time, Iyer does time travelling, lets say 10-15 years in the past and looks at those days and cherishes those days or lets say cherishes one aspect of those days… advertisements-cum-jingles-cum-funny-one-liners from those days… hmpf… *jaane kahan gaye wo din*

This post by Yum n Yum talks about how old friends remind her of old songs old songs that are like old friends. (Okay I am very pathetic at trying to express ideas, regardless of whether they are my own or otherwise… so I would suggest you read this post… she writes fabulously). This made me think, can old friends remind me of old jingles? Everybody who has seen television or listened to radio will appreciate the fact that the older jingles were dhammal.

Think about it, the old jingles played on TV’s and radios were so much fun. They were actually hilarious. We look back on those days and we can’t resist laughing at the kind of ads we were subjected to as compared to these days. But weren’t those ads a part and parcel of our daily dose of entertainment. Didn’t we enjoy them as deliciously as we are enjoying, seeing babes in bikinis trying to sell apple juice (that seriously is a very pathetic combination and what is worse is the fact that its surrogate advertising and what is being sold is not even apple juice). But that apart, however bad / unexposed we think media was in those days, I still think nobody beats the jingles of the olden days. They are just, as a malayalee would like to call it, FANDASTICK…

Imagine you meeting an old and unkept friend of yours who is still as shabbily dressed as ever and his clothes look like they haven’t been washed since the last time you met him… and bam… the all-time-radio-hit-jingle (you shuddav been an avid listener of Vividh Bharati to get the tune of this jingle) hits your head and it starts playing this…

Imagine, you meeting a prankster lil friend of yours, whom you are meeting after like 25 years. He / she were the partner in crime for all your pranks and… poof… the famous bajaj jingle starts playing automatically…

Some old time friend of yours is not keeping well and had to be admitted to the hospital. (There is an unsaid rule that applies to visitors of hospitals. All have to give advice… solicited or unsolicited… whatever… when you visit a sick patient you have to give advice). Then, imagine you start advising your friend somewhat like this…

Aaah… you find your long-time-gone girl on whom you had a crush and she actually succeeded in crushing your crush. Now she’s walking with her 5 yr old kid and the kid comes to you and says “Mamaji” and you say to yourself “Saala… baap banne chala tha… bana diya mama”. And you look at her and you just cannot take your eyes off her glowingly beautiful skin and your dil goes… (not hmmm hmmm hmmm re)

She talks to you and you, the charmer that you are, make her smile and then laugh… and you admire her million dollar smile till date and you go (please note that this is the continuation to the previous ad… two different jingles in one ad)

Oh those days… those days were so wonderful… right from the nirma-wala-aye-babuji ad to the surf-wali-lalitaji-aur-unka-dimaag wala ad to the mazhar-khan-scoring-goal-and-bathingwala lifebouy adto the kay-jhaala-baal-radat-hota-woodwards-gripe-water ad … And the shorties of ek-anek and tree-of-unity are just unforgettable. I know this sounds clichéd but ‘those were the days of the jingles’ yaar. This post is just a tribute to the genre of ads and jingles that would hardly appear in the future (unless of course you guys want to believe in the history repeats itself story and expect such ads to return). These ads will be buried forever… not in the archives of some old dilapidated buildings but in the hearts of a lot of people… and that itself is an ode to them :)

adios…

PS: When bird/alap/abhi/paro pakao me (individually or collectively), I sing this jingle to myself (the keyword here is pakao… or pakaya)… this one happens to be one of my all-time favs. This gives me guaranteed results and they don’t pakao me further.

9 comments:

iyer, apart from the fact that u dont have much to do in ur office .. u still rock .. very well written.

Yes during those days jingles were actually used to promote the specialties a product had to offer as compared to today jingles are for .. if u dont have much to say write a jingle .. n any of them are really pathetic e.g. the rani mukharji .. crunch ad.

One of the reasons cud be that during those days ad spend on print was huge as compared to tv (may be coz there was only DD) .. and tv ad had to make it big